A popular rumour about the ‘Radeon II’ was that it would feature two
Radeon256 GPUs, like the Rage Fury MAXX. As you know ATI brought out the
Radeon 8500, which I think you will agree is a much better GPU than the
Radeon256 and featured a lot more performance than two Radeon256 GPUs.
However, with the R300 in development, and the Radeon 8500 doing so well, it
makes sense to release a dual Radeon 8500 board. A Radeon 8500 MAXX if you
will, so we have more time to spend on the R300 where as the R250 isn’t
going to be as much as an architectural change as the R300 will be. With the
improved AFR™ technique used, we can almost double performance, without any
of the negative effects attributed to SLI. This is the biggest new feature
of the Radeon 8500 MAXX, but there are a few tweaks to the Radeon 8500 GPU.

The card has updated Hyper Z™ to make more effective use of available memory
bandwidth. It now is 100% effective at removing hidden surfaces. Also as
part of it we have given it an extra cache (hence the Triple Cache
Architecture). This third cache stores the Z-Buffer coordinates of the
previous scene; I can’t go into detail on it, but it effectively compares
the cached Z-Buffer to the new one, this in conjunction with our new HSR
algorithm allows for much quicker removal of hidden surfaces. For example in
UT2003 you may be walking down a path, and in front of you is a large
structure. No matter, which way you look, you can’t see the inside of the
structure, only the front. With HSR, the polygons you don’t see are chucked
away before they are rendered. With the help of the cache, it will be easier
to see that those polygons are still behind the front and can be chucked
away straight away, before using our complex algorithm to see fully if the
polygon can be removed, thus saving a lot of computational power, and
leaving more room for the actual rendering of the game. (We had begun
optimising this further but the development of the drivers was
problematic...they might just sort out for the planned release date.)

The dual 400Mhz RAMDACS are integrated in the Radeon 8500 GPU, but only one
in each. The primary GPU houses the primary RAMDAC, and obviously the
secondary GPU houses the secondary RAMDAC. This allows for all Radeon 8500
MAXX boards, regardless of manufacturer, to support dual 24” monitors. With
the R300 we managed to integrate the 2D filters into the GPU as well, that
way we can ensure all R300 boards have the best 2D quality available to
users, regardless of who makes the card. The reason for this is a lot of
customers have expressed their desire for much sharper text at high
resolutions, as well as more vibrant colours. (my emphasis: We have managed
to gain some improvements from this, but its still not great.)

We also have a daughter card that will be made available. This daughter card
will feature full VIVO functions, expanding the features of the MAXX. The
way the daughter board will be attached to the Radeon 8500 MAXX is currently
still to be decided.

A prime concern with customers was texture quality. The devs at ATI have
taken this very seriously, and have taken great lengths to make the texture
quality of the Radeon 8500 MAXX the best of any other 3D product, and from
working development cards it is noticeable better than the 8500. Only other
comments I will give on the R300 are 8 pipelines, and DirectX 9 support."